While at the Captain America Winter Soldier Press Junket, we had the chance to meet and interview actors Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie & Sebastian Stan BUT the movie wouldn’t have happened without Kevin Feige.
Kevin Feige not only produced Captain America Winter Soldier but he is also the President of Marvel Studios…yes the “President” of Marvel Studios!
Not only is he brilliant but he’s a genuine comic fan – which is probably why the latest Marvel Super Hero films have been so awesome! I am thankful he took the time to speak with us (I assume he has a lot to do being president of Marvel Studios and all). Here’s what Kevin Feige had to say…
How did you go about casting the new characters introduced in this film?
It varies. I mean sometimes, it’s just auditioning Actors…Frankly, with Anthony Mackie, that’s a case where we knew who we wanted. That’s who the Russos wanted. That’s who, we thought would be great and he agreed, which was nice.
Sometime you know, it’s getting a call from Mr. Redford’s Agent saying do you have anything that might be good for him and we went Holy Mackerel, we sure do. So we made some adjustments to his Character to increase his stature and to make it worthy of Robert Redford playing it.
With the various Comic films being released are there any challenges with tying them together?
The biggest challenge is making that continuity and that interconnectivity broaden the Universe…without needing to know everything that’s going on with the other movies to see any of these Movies. We work very hard to make each of the Movies feel like a stand-alone Movie but at the same time connect in to everything else…I wouldn’t say that’s the biggest challenge but that’s been our sort of Mission Statement and that’s what we try to stick to.
Why is it so important that you keep the movies them different yet connected?
…If they start to feel redundant, they start to feel Cookie Cutter…and people are gonna lose interest. I’m not interested in making the same movie over and over again. So it’s very important to us that we mix them up and that they feel very unique.
How do you go about doing that with Captain America
…We had a wonderful opportunity where you have a Character whose origins were in the 1940s. At the end of that Movie, we reveal that he’s now alive in the present day. He’s got a brief adventure in the Avengers Film but doesn’t have a lot of time to think about…where he’s living, he’s got to stop this horrible event from happening.
So now this was the Movie where we got to say OK, here’s Steve in the modern day, let’s do something totally unique and that led us to the notion of doing the Marvel Superhero version of a ’70s Action Movie, a ’70s Political Thriller. He doesn’t fly, and he doesn’t go visit other Planets so that gave us an opportunity to do the kind of Action that we haven’t necessarily done before in our Movies which is a ground base and visceral: car chases and hand to hand combat.
Why would is the Winter Soldier character controversial for comic book fans?
Comic Fans always knew sort of two things…peak Characters die and come back to life in Comics…But there are two Characters in the Marvel Universe that are never gonna come back to life, Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes. About 10 years ago or 12 years ago, a Comic Book Writer, Ed Brubaker, went to Publishing (I didn’t have anything to do with it) and said, I have an idea to bring Bucky Barnes back. I’m sure they’re like what are you talking about? You can’t do that. And they pitched the idea and it was great. And it was the Winter Soldier idea and it was done so well and you’re right, I think Fans went No, you can’t– Oh that’s great, we love that. We just took the successful blueprint that they had already done and brought it into this Movie.
What’s next for Marvel?
…Now we’re spending a lot of time in the cutting room on “Guardians of the Galaxy” which comes out August 1st…In about 2 weeks, we start filming “Avengers Age of Ultron” so that’s coming up very fast and that will be the next Movie up in May of 2015. And then in about 10 weeks, we start filming “Ant-Man” with Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd and that comes out in July of 2015.
We haven’t announced what comes after that in 2016 and 2017 but we’re actively working on any number of things and are beginning to hone in on sort of exactly what the Movies will be out in 216 and 2017 but it’s slightly too early to talk about.
Want to read more about what the cast of Captain America had to say, check out my interviews with Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan.
Disclosure: I went on this trip as part of a Disney press trip. All of my travel, lodging and meal expenses were covered by them. No other compensation was received. However, all opinions/thoughts are 100% my own
So cool! The president of Marvel Studios 😀 It was so much fun!